The Box (2021)

Latex, acrylic, rubber cement, unspun wool, yarn

The Box is a sound installation and durational performance composed of latex that was displayed at Holden Gallery, Manchester in 2021. This piece is based on the architectural dimensions of the small apartment artist Ella Jo Skinner was quarantined in during the COVID-19 pandemic. She subverts this architecture by reconstructing the space as flesh, reflecting the inner experience of entrapment and isolation onto an outer, concrete reality. 

A performer is placed within an inner latex structure and is directed to perform the Catholic ritual of the sign of the cross. However, placed within such a small, suffocating space this ritual becomes frantic and desperate, and the performance develops into a physical state of anxiety, pressure, and pain. The latex structure only reveals the silhouette of the performer, muting their figure, meaning their expression of this experience can only be communicated effectively to the audience through sound. The body of the performer is wired to a contact microphone and distortion pedal set-up so that everything they touch within the structure is met with a loud, jarring sound. The artist Ella Jo Skinner, collaborated with the musician Jack Spittle to create a soundscape that works within the physical boundaries of the installation. Skinner and Spittle recorded a mixture of acoustics, vocals, and basslines whilst locked inside cupboards to emulate the sound of entrapment and isolation. The fragility of the latex or “skin” containing a performer, who sweats and struggles within, perhaps reveals how such a physical and emotional state can be broken through, but our internal anxieties prevent us from doing so, revealing a failure to achieve empathy with others. 

This piece was displayed with no wall text or context in order to engulf the audience with an intense, visceral sensation of what it means to desire freedom, but simultaneously being paralysed by an inability to break free. This piece should not be limited to our experience of isolation during the COVID-19 pandemic but extend to the act of masking our inner anguish in a sanitised community causing an inability to connect with those around us whilst experiencing intense pain.

Ella Jo Skinner

Curator: Ian Rawlinson

Musical Composition: Jack Spittle, Ella Jo Skinner

Performers: Jack Spittle, Thomas Sullivan, Adriana Szczerepa

Camera operation: Samantha Harris, Adriana Szczerepa

Editor: Ella Jo Skinner

Holden Gallery (Manchester, UK)